On Thursday, the United States Department of Justice announced that it will sue drug wholesale company AmerisourceBergen for allegedly fueling America’s opioid crisis by failing to report thousands of suspicious orders to the Drug Enforcement Agency.
In a civil complaint filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the DOJ alleges that AmerisourceBergen Corporation, as well as two of its subsidiaries, violated federal law in connection with the distribution of controlled substances to pharmacies across the nation. The alleged “hundreds of thousands” of violations date as far back as 2014.
"Companies distributing opioids are required to report suspicious orders to federal law enforcement," Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement, adding that the corporation sold billions of units of prescription opioids and “repeatedly failed to comply with that requirement" even when executives were aware of "red flags" at some of the pharmacies.
On a phone call with reporters on Thursday, U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger for the District of New Jersey shared that in one case, AmerisourceBergen allegedly learned that there were drug deals occurring in the parking lot of one of the pharmacies. Despite this, an AmerisourceBergen subsidiary continued to ship “thousands of opioid orders” to the pharmacy where this was occurring and did not report any suspicious orders to the DEA.
Over the course of ten years, Sellinger continued, AmerisourceBergen “violated the Controlled Substances Act by failing to report at least hundreds of thousands of suspicious opioid orders to the DEA.”
“In a very real way, AmerisourceBergen put its profits from selling opioids over the safety of the American people,” Selllinger said. According to the lawsuit, AmerisourceBergen was aware of significant “red flags” of diversion at five pharmacies, one of which was based in New Jersey, and recently pleaded guilty to unlawfully selling controlled substances.
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“Despite telling the DEA that it had stopped selling controlled substances to this pharmacy, an AmerisourceBergen subsidiary used a proxy distributor – a straw – to secretly continue funneling hundreds of opioids orders to that same pharmacy,” Sellinger said.
The others included a pharmacy in New Jersey whose pharmacist-in-charge had been indicted for drug diversion, a pharmacy in Florida and a pharmacy in West Virginia where AmerisourceBergen executives allegedly knew drugs it distributed were being sold in parking lots for cash, and a pharmacy in Colorado that AmerisourceBergen is alleged to have known was its largest purchaser of oxycodone in the state and which one of its employees identified the patients as “drug addicts.”
"Defendants continued to flood the pharmacy with massive quantities of opioids for years after," the lawsuit said. "Two of the customers whom the employee identified later died of drug overdoses shortly after buying opioids from that pharmacy."
The lawsuit asks for potentially billions of dollars in financial penalties against Amerisource Begen based on the violations of the Controlled Substances Act. Gupta told reporters that in 2022, the DEA seized 50.6 million fentanyl-laced, fake prescription pills and more than 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder. The agency estimates this represents more than 379 million deadly doses of fentanyl.
“In the midst of a catastrophic opioid epidemic, AmerisourceBergen allegedly altered its internal systems in a way that reduced the number of orders that would be flagged as suspicious. And even up to the orders that AmerisourceBergen identified as suspicious, the company routinely failed to report those suspicious orders,” Gupta said on the call. “In short, the government’s complaint alleges that for years AmerisourceBergen prioritized profits over its legal obligations and over Americans’ well-being.”
In a statement on Thursday, AmerisourceBergen accused the DOJ of “cherry picking” issues with certain pharmacies. The corporation claimed that in each case, it “invested time and money to take action before the DEA did.”
One year ago, the DOJ sued Walmart for allegedly contributing to the county’s opioid crisis by not properly screening for abuse in its practices. According to The Hill, the lawsuit alleged that Walmart urged its employees to fill prescriptions quickly and “discouraged scrutiny of them.” This practice made it difficult to pinpoint suspicious orders that needed to be reported.
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